Our home at sea.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

Sea Fever - John Masefield

Our tall Ship, Seminole Wind is Island Packet 465 built in Florida in 2009/10, she was crossed the Atlantic for the first time in late 2010 as the UK showboat in London & Southampton.  We bought her as a new boat in and commissioned her in Souhampton UK. and her hull kissed the water for the first time in  November 2011.

The journey began in Dec of that year sailing to Guernsey in a gale to get her out of the EU in time to punitive avoid 20% tax.. After 2 great years sailing the challenging waters of the UK Channel Islands we took a shakedown passage down to Lanzarote and then across the Atlantic to Antigua. Since then we have cruised the US east coast extensively and returned to circumnavigate the Caribbean twice.

Seminole Wind has a traditional long keel which has many advantages over modern fin keel designs. For ocean sailing long keels give a more gentle, sea kindly motion, they handle weather better and because they are not bolted on they don’t fall off. The keel goes almost all the way back to the rudder so the prop is protected from most underwater hazards e.g. discarded fishing nets & rope.

Atlantic crossing

We chose not to join the annual ARC rally and left Lanzarote in December 2013, celebrating Christmas at sea with a full three course tradition dinner and arrived just in time for New Years Celebrations. We sailed three and a half thousand nm, 17 days at sea with just Terry and I on board and in all that time we saw not a single other vessel or airplane In all we have logged well over 20,000 Nautical Miles (NM + 1.1 statute miles) in Seminole Wind and she has taken care of us in all weathers.

Is she perfect?

There is no such thing as a perfect boat, they all have their strengths and their foibles.

The long keel that makes her so comfortable at sea can make for some challenging sail handling. The comforts provided by generators, water makers, fridges, freezers etc also mean that maintenance is a constant and everything that needs fixing is down a hatch and calls for contortions, skinned knuckles and the odd curse - well a fair few curses actually. But for what we chose her for she has not disappointed and in so many ways performs better than we expected. Sheseems as fresh today as the day we stepped aboard for the first passage but now far better equipped than she was then. In all truth, so are we, his a has been a joyous learning curve and we are learning still.

Built. 2009 - St Petersburg Fl. USA

Description: Long keel displacement sailing yacht withs keg hung rudder.

Commissioned: November 2011, Southampton UK

LOA: 48'-9'' LWL: 38'-1''

Beam: 14'-4'' Draft: 5'

Airdraft: (mast height above water) 64’

Displacement: 34500lbs – 16 tons - fully loaded 20 tons

Engine: 75hp Yanmar torbo diesel

Generator: Onan 7 kw diesel

Sailplan: Cutter rig (mainsail, Yankee, Staysail) + Parasailor spinnaker + storm jib.

Sailhandling: 6 x Lewmar cockpit winches - 2 x 54 + 146 (power) 1 x 46, 2 x 16 + 2 x 46 mast winches

Electronics: Integrated Raymarine 2 x Chartplotter MFDs, radar, depth, wind, vhf, air transponder, satphone, navtex, (all replaced in 2015) - Starlink wifi (2023)